ClimateGate
tlambert | July 1, 2010Penn State investigation concludes:
The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined
that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor,
Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.
More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did
not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously
deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing,
conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.
The…
tlambert | June 3, 2010Earlier I noted the way McIntyre quote mined the stolen CRU emails. But would an honest analysis of the messages have found? Brian Angliss makes the case that it is impossible to understand the emails without consulting with the authors to find out what the original context was.
illconsidered | May 22, 2010Roy Spencer, darling of the climate skeptic community, says he is not very organized, as Phil Jones said of himself, and that
"if you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I'd have great difficulty too. We just didn't realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become - now it would just all be stored on computer."
This is quoted in a BBC article on the recent Heartland climate conference in New York.
Spencer goes on to say:
"Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all…
illconsidered | May 20, 2010Love the title of that post! Keith Kloor tries to defend journalism's role in fiascos like "Swifthack" (aka Climategate) and climate science in general but really ends up simply providing a perfect example of the problem.
I urge any and all to read the comment thread, it is an excellent and fascinating one, though I am only about a third of the way through. Great contributions from Things Break and Michael Tobis, appearnces by Andrew Revkin and Judith Curry.
It is still going on though I would wager it's utility has diminished to near zero (I could be wrong).
I would like very much to…
tlambert | May 12, 2010Deep Climate documents what happened when Steve McIntyre combined his talent for making mountains out of molehills with David Rose's talent for fabrication:
So in summary, we have a nonsensical accusation of "artful" manipulation of a key graph. And we have a fake "blowup" from the Mail on Sunday that contains important differences with the real figure.
Read the whole thing.
illconsidered | May 2, 2010So the blogosphere has been abuzz over a recent Q&A Keith Kloor did with Judy Curry, the lengthy comment thread is where most of the interesting stuff is. I actually wish to opine on the whole sorry mess but that will be in a later post. Her biggest beef is about what she sees as "tribalism", but I only want to highlight with this post a comment on a follow up thread that really jumped out at me:
Kate says:
This is the fight that will define the twenty-first century as either a time when mankind advances due to honest enterprise, quality science, and technical achievement...or we are…
illconsidered | April 30, 2010I always marvel at the scientist-government conspiracy theories the more wacky members of the climate denial machine toss around so confidently.
How do they fit this into their world view?
In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli's office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann's receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann-- now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State-- was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
...
Among the documents Cuccinelli demands are any and all emailed or…
illconsidered | April 24, 2010Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal for Earth Day and exhibits the best of climate denialism's ability to flip reality on its head. I was considering going through it and highlighting its many falsehoods and logical holes but Arthur Smith has done a fine job of it already.
The WSJ op-ed is behind a paywall, but if you click the first result in this google search, you can read it in full. Arthur's take down is here.
tlambert | April 18, 2010Andrew Bolt comes up a killer argument to refute the findings of Oxburgh's committee: Oxburgh's "choice of transport to the press conference". You see, Oxburgh drove there in an enormous SUV, so obviously he doesn't really believe that the CRU scientists' work is sound, else he would have come on a bicycle or something. Oh wait, Oxburgh did arrive on a bicycle, so Bolt deploys a slightly different argument:
Surely Oxburgh's choice of transport to the press conference on his Climategate findings should have made some journalists there wonder about his impartiality: ... You see ...
Lord…
illconsidered | April 8, 2010Here is a fascinating exchange between George Monbiot and Steve Easterbrook exploring the larger issues behind the recent Swifthacking of CRU email (aka ClimateGate).
Steve makes an excellent presentation of the case for what happens to be my personal view on this mess, namely that the media has failed in a major and tragic way and that this is a tale of a successful propaganda campaign not scientific corruption. In my opinion, Monbiot seems to understand Steve's points but still does not get the real story.
Have a read:
The computer scientist Steve Easterbrook wrote an interesting critique…
nisbetmc | April 5, 2010
Last week I called attention to the emerging "science audit" movement, a network of engaged citizens who combine their own professional expertise with online communication strategies to demand a greater level of transparency in scientific research and data.
Most prominent on climate change, this movement is likely to grow to include any issue where scientific evidence is claimed as the central criteria driving policy decision-making. Demands for a second-level of inclusive and participatory review of research in areas ranging from nanotechnology to biomedical research to vaccine safety…
illconsidered | April 2, 2010One thing the blogosphere is good for is spirited discussion and fast dissemination of news stories. One thing it is not good for is the old addage "where there's smoke, there's fire".
The recent "swifthacking" of CRU email (aka "climategate") is a great example of tremendous amounts of smoke being created out of something statistically indistinguishable from bupkus.
The UK's House of Commons has released a report after weeks of careful investigation into the details and implications of the illegally obtained and distributed emails to and from a handful of East Anglia University climate…
tlambert | April 1, 2010The House of Commons report on the emails stolen from CRU has vindicated Phil Jones -- he has "no case to answer":
The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones's refusal to share raw data and computer codes, we consider that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community. We have suggested that the community consider becoming more transparent by publishing raw data and detailed methodologies. On accusations relating to Freedom of Information, we consider that much of the responsibility should…
nisbetmc | March 30, 2010Last month, Judith Curry had an important essay at Physics Today that deserves more attention than it has received.
Curry argues that unlike the industry-funded climate skeptic movement of the past, contemporary debate is driven by a new generation of blog-based "climate auditors" who merge their own professional expertise with online communication strategies to demand a greater level of transparency in climate science. Here's how Curry describes the movement:
So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have…
tlambert | March 20, 2010Deep Climate covers the latest in the IOPgate scandal
The controversy over the Institute of Physics biased submission to the U.K. Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee's investigation of the stolen emails from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit is about to get a whole lot hotter.
Of particular interest to Deltoid readers might be the Monckton connection (quoting Donald Oats on 8 Mar):
Monckton was touring Australia - perhaps still is - and during that tour he made some allusions to Climate Scientists being about to face criminal charges, and also to peak academic bodies having…
nisbetmc | March 18, 2010
I have an article at Slate magazine today that ties together and elaborates on some of the themes explored at this blog over the past several weeks. Below is the lede to the full article. No doubt, the article will generate a good amount of discussion which I will highlight in follow up posts. I will also highlight specific comments made over at Slate.
Chill Out: Climate scientists are getting a little too angry for their own good.
By Matthew C. Nisbet
As Congress continues to struggle its way toward new energy legislation, climate scientists are getting a little hot. A series of major…
nisbetmc | March 13, 2010
At a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Stanford University communication professor Jon Krosnick presented the best analysis to date estimating the impact of "ClimateGate" on public perceptions of climate change and of climate scientists. Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, where Krosnick is a faculty fellow, has put together a detailed news release on Krosnick's survey analysis. Also above is a YouTube clip of Krosnick explaining the research.
The full report should be read, but below I feature several key conclusions. Despite alarm over the presumed impact of ClimateGate,…
tlambert | March 5, 2010BigCityLib catches the IOP using the memory hole.
William Connolley is not impressed:
What a bunch of slimy little toads: they pretend to believe in openness, they won't tell us who wrote their statements, then they silently airbrush out embarassing words afterwards.
pronald | March 3, 2010John Broder writes today in the New York Times that the uproar over the unauthorized release of hundreds of emails and recent revelations about a mistake in the IPCC report threatens to undermine decades of work and has badly damaged public trust in the scientific enterprise.
Broder's interviews with scientists reveal two thoughtful but seemingly opposing viewpoints:
'Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious scientific body in the United States, said that there was a danger that the distrust of climate science could mushroom into doubts about…
tlambert | February 22, 2010Coverage of the Leakegate scandal is spreading.
Media Lens has published a media alert about the disinformation about climate science being published by British newspapers. Leake, as the worst offender, gets special mention. They quote James Hansen:
"The media have done a great disservice to the public. This mess should be cleared up in the next year or so, although the damage may linger a while, because some people who paid attention to sensationalism may not bother with accurate explanations of the truth.
The impression left from this affair is that there are some parts of the media that…